This invention relates to telephone answering systems, and more particularly to a beeper simulator for a telephone answering apparatus whereby the need for carrying an individual beeper to obtain recorded messages is thereby eliminated.
Telephone answering apparatus are readily available for use on all types of telephone lines. Typically, the telephone answering apparatus is installed and is available for providing an outgoing message indicating the absence of the answering party and is available for recording a number of incoming messages. When the answering party returns to the premises, he can easily obtain his messages by playing back the recorded messages left on the machine.
Since on many occasions the answering party desires to obtain his messages without returning to the machine itself, most telephone answering apparatus provide a beeper device which is carried by the answering party. At any remote telephone location, the answering party dials his own telephone number and upon connection to his own telephone answering apparatus, he places the beeper device near the speaker of the telephone he is using and has the beeper emit a signal onto the telephone line. This beeper signal is of a particular frequency to which the telephone apparatus is preset. Upon receipt of that particular beeper signal, the telephone answering apparatus will rewind and play back the messages.
Many beeper devices are provided with two different signals in order to control two different aspects of the telephone answering apparatus. One beeper signal is for rewinding and playing back the messages, as previously described. The other beeper signal is used for back spacing and changing the outgoing message on the telephone apparatus.
While the use of the beeper device is very beneficial, the need for carrying the beeper device is quite awkward. Frequently, the answering party may forget to carry his beeper device and thereby not be able to obtain his messages. At other times, there may be so much noise around the telephone being used that the sounds emitted from the beeper are inaudible because of the background noise. A most important problem is that the beeper may be lost and, someone finding the beeper and knowing the telephone number may be able to utilize the beeper to obtain all of the messages.
Accordingly, it would be convenient to avoid the use of the beeper device and yet obtain the benefits of being able to remotely inquire the apparatus to obtain messages. One solution to this problem is as described in U.S. Pat. No. 4,122,306 issued to the inventors of the present invention. In that patent, there is described a telephone answering apparatus which responds to digits dialed onto a remote telephone handset. By dialing predetermined coded digits, the telephone answering apparatus will respond in various aspects. Specified digits will cause the machine to rewind and play back the message while others would be used to change messages.
While the apparatus of the above patent resolves the problem of carrying around a beeper, unfortunately, many individuals have already installed other telephone answering apparatus which do not respond to the coded number set forth in that patent, but only respond to the beeper signal of their apparatus. Additionally, most of the currently available telephone answering apparatus are still of the type responding only to beeper signals and thus, those particular apparatus cannot benefit from the coding scheme set forth in the above U.S. Pat. No. 4,122,306.
Accordingly, there is still the need of a device which can eliminate the necessity for carrying the beeper device and at the same time can be utilized with any type of telephone answering apparatus which now utilizes a beeper.